Day Schools: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

A former Head of School and long-time educator reports on the state of Jewish day schools.

The following article records the successes-- both in terms of growth of enrollment and increase in number of schools--and the challenges facing Jewish day schools in America.
It is reprinted with permission from October 2000 issue of Sh'ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility.

In 1978, when I was 29 years old with little experience in school administration, I was given the privilege to head the Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston, a then 17‑year‑old Conservative movement day school. At the time, the school was temporarily renting a public school building from the City of Newton; the enrollment of the K‑8 school was just under 200 students. At that time, greater Boston had four day schools-- two Orthodox, one Modern‑Orthodox (the Maimonides School), and the Schechter School that I was heading. Nationally, there were under 450 schools enrolling just over 100,000 students, with 9,500 in Schechter schools.

Twenty years later, when I stepped down as Head of School and assumed the directorship of PEJE, the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, the school had grown to two campuses, both owned by the school, with a student population of 600 students. The Greater Boston area had expanded to 14 day schools, including a proliferation of options for the non‑Orthodox community at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. This expansive growth in a brief two‑decade period is mirrored across the country, with the latest census showing nearly 700 schools with an enrollment that is rapidly approaching 200,000 students, including nearly 21,000 in Schechter schools.

As a Jewish educator and as one convinced of the power that day school education can have in the creation of a vibrant and literate Jewish community, I am gratified by this remarkable progress in the expansion of the day school option, an expansion that is not limited to the Orthodox community. With nearly 70 Schechter schools, over 20 Reform day schools, 70 community schools, and a growing number of community‑sponsored high schools, the day school option is available to and chosen by an ever‑growing number of non‑Orthodox families. The excellence of the schools, the opportunities for more connected learning, and the powerful sense of community that students, parents, and faculty feel in the day school world have helped to establish the day school option more firmly in nearly every community in North America. The success of day school graduates in assuming important lay and professional positions within the Jewish community has also helped to underscore the positive impact of this environment.

With this phenomenal success story and rapid pace of growth, however, come concerns about the capacity tosustain this large enterprise, which currently has an annual cost of nearly $1 billion. The rapid growth has meant that there is meager infrastructure to support the increased demand for the availability of this kind of education. The shortage of qualified personnel on the administrative and teacher level is profound, as is the dearth of seasoned lay leaders to provide badly needed governance for these increasingly complex schools. The schools have been so busy growing that they have often been unable to utilize expertise, consultation, and reflection to think more strategically about next steps. The increased popularity of day schools has thrown many of these institutions into searches for their own identity, as expressed in debates over the balance of general studies and Judaic studies, how much Hebrew language, and how much emphasis on textual literacy versus more affective programming.

Rabbi Joshua Elkin is Executive Director of the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE), a grant-making & advocacy organization for Jewish day schools. He was head of the Solomon Schecter Day School of Greater Boston for 20 years. He has also served as Adjunct Lecturer in Jewish Education at the Brandeis University Hornstein Program in Jewish Communal Service.